Sam Vesty's impending move to Bath – as the second home-grown Leicester player to switch to the West Country in a month, after Lewis Moody also agreed a move to the Recreation Ground – has prompted the Tigers to again question the value of the Guinness Premiership's £4m salary cap.

The 28-year old fly-half, the fourth generation of his family to play for Leicester, is expected to announce his move this week. A key figure in Leicester's title-winning campaign last season, when they also reached the Heineken Cup final, this season he has fallen to third-choice fly-half, behind England's Toby Flood and the Irishman Jeremy Staunton.

Leicester fans have expressed concern at the loss of two players who have spent their senior careers with the club and have questioned whether the Tigers have been financially constrained by building the £14m Caterpillar Stand, which was opened earlier this season.

"The new stand was a big commitment and it will take time for it to come to its potential," the Leicester chief executive, Peter Wheeler, said. "We are pleased with how our gates have picked up but we are not selling out every week, as we did before. It will not be too long before we do. We can only spend on wages what the cap allows and that also goes for our academy. We are not the only club that feels the cap is more trouble than it is worth. It is costly to police and administering it takes a lot of time. The benefits of it are not definable apart from an evenly based league in which any one team can beat any other on a given day.

"We also have to think about Europe. England only has one team in this weekend's Heineken Cup quarter-finals and while that is not a concern as a one-off, it would be if it happened again next season. Having a cap makes it more difficult to hold on to players and while you would like to keep someone like Lewis Moody for all his career, the cap means they can often get better wages elsewhere."

The cap will be in place next season, after which it will be reviewed. "You can keep raising its limit, but you have to be aware that some clubs would not have the money and so you cannot just hike it up," Wheeler said. "We have always taken pride in producing players and the likes of Ben Youngs and Dan Cole show that we are continuing to do so, but the cap makes it very difficult for directors of rugby."

Leicester were knocked out of the Heineken Cup by the Ospreys in January. The Welsh side play Biarritz in San Sebastián in the quarter-final on Saturday and will be accompanied to Spain by their director of rugby, Scott Johnson, who was taken ill last week. There were reports the 47-year old had suffered a heart attack but he was in his office on Tuesday. "Scott has had some health issues, but he's on the mend," said the Ospreys' head coach, Sean Holley. "He is not 100% but he is back in work, taking small steps and it will be very difficult to stop him from travelling this weekend."